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Business Process Management

From business process management principles to business process in action, find articles and short videos on BPM, improving cycle time, different methodologies, process mapping and business process documentation.

Regular visitors to the site will know that I like receiving questions. Where possible and time permitting, I’ll create new content to answer business process management questions but sometimes, the answer is already on the site. Read on for a few recent questions on topics that has been covered in the past. [Tweet “Process management […]

I get a lot of calls asking if I “do” Six Sigma. While I use some elements of the Six Sigma tool kit, no, I don’t do Six Sigma. I am not a black belt or even a green belt. Now, the reasons are not what you might be thinking. I am familiar with Six […]

[Tweet “Six Sigma is not the answer to all business process problems.”] I recently did a one-day process audit for a client. This is where I take a high level survey of the current health of their business processes. Usually the client already knows they have a problem perhaps because they have noticed one […]

Early on in my consulting practice I would take almost any job. Back then, if the Sheriff of Nottingham had asked me to improve tax collection processes in Sherwood Forest, I would have been tempted. So the first time a client asked me to look at a sales process, I did not hesitate. Now, of […]

People frequently confuse projects with processes. Even software companies that sell great process management apps typically pitch them as project management software. You could argue that this is a matter of semantics. What’s in a name? Either way, you are going to perform a set of tasks to get something done. Calling it a project […]

The typical process discovery questions are things like “What is your role?” and “How do you perform this task?” We have all at least answered questions like this if we haven’t actually asked them ourselves. There is nothing wrong with them. You need to know the basics. The trouble is that basic process discovery […]

In a previous post titled, 7 Things a Process Diagram Does Not Show You, I outlined those things that you might expect a process map NOT to tell you and explained why this was so. Here, just for fun, is an infographic that illustrates the points made in the article. Share it with your colleagues […]

The traditional way to identify process improvement is to map the “as-is” state. Then you invite the users to point out on the map the problem areas. These then become the targets for improvement projects. Now, while this approach does certainly yield efficiencies, it doesn’t always capture all the potential opportunities. A process map does […]

In part 1 of this 3 part series, Classifying Different Process Types, I introduced the idea of the parameters of predictability and frequency of process. And we looked at how we might plot these two parameters against each other. Then I showed why processes that fall into the high frequency-high predictability quadrant are suitable for standard […]

When something works for you, it’s very hard to consider using something else. If that’s true in life, it certainly works for consulting. Most consultants have a “one-size-fits-all” approach to process improvement. And in the sales pitch: surprise, surprise that just happens to be the right methodology to fix your processes. But the fact is […]